Biofuel advocates have formed a new lobbying group, the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy, to promote the development of biofuels and to raise public awareness of how the agriculture industry can help us grow our way out of food and fuel shortages. The group is spearheaded by ag powerhouses like Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, DuPont, Deere & Co., and others.

Despite the heavy hitters on the Alliance team, they face an uphill battle in Congress and in the public eye. The recent arguments over whether corn-based biofuel is driving food prices worldwide (short version: probably not) have nonetheless increased a feeling among the general public that biofuel is problematic. The Alliance’s legislative agenda is simple: keep the 51-cents a gallon subsidy for production of corn biofuel, and keep the tariff hedge up against Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol.

Other big-ag players oppose the Alliance’s position. Most notable is Tyson Foods, which says its profit margins have gone into the dirt as a result of spiraling feed prices, which they blame on the use of corn for ethanol production. The established lobbying group Grocery Manufacturers’ Association is strongly opposed to the use of food crops in biofuel productions. We can look for a clash of the titans in the lobbying arena, as the companies involved really do have vested interests in opposite outcomes.

Farmers, interestingly enough, have less of a dog in this fight than you might guess. Farmers don’t get the ethanol subsidy – the distillers get that money. So the loss of the 51 cents a gallon might reduce demand for corn at the ethanol distilleries if ADM and other distillers decide to cut production – but it won’t directly take money out of the farmer’s pockets. Similarly, lowering or removing the tariffs on Brazilian ethanol might relieve some of the price pressure on corn, but won’t directly hit farmers. These tariffs and subsidies are a game being played by the big distillery producers, and it’s tough to predict what the real impact on corn prices at the elevator would be. My guess is, the combination of losing the subsidy and losing the tariff (which isn’t even on the table at the moment, and the Alliance is fighting to keep it that way) would have a very modest deflationary effect on corn prices in the short term, and in the long term wouldn’t make a difference either way.

Now that you have that spiffy new tractor or planter, what to do with the old one?  There are a few things that you can do to make your trash another man’s treasure with only a little effort. 

1.       Love at first sight.  How often did you look at the rusty truck sitting for sale on the side of the road?   Chances are, not ever.  Take that rusty truck, add some sanding, primer and paint and it looks as good as the day it rolled off the lot.  It is a proven fact that the first thing people take note of is outward appearance.  That can be applied to nearly everything – including farm equipment.  By taking that old piece of equipment and putting in a few hours work you could automatically increase the price by about $500.  A friend of mine did this with a horse trailer that was originally priced at $800 and got zero calls.  After some paint, she was able to sell it for $1500 within a week. 

2.       Extra-Extra read all about it!  Now is the time to hit the web.  You can reach a wide variety of potential buyers by using free classifieds.  There are tons of such Web sites out there.  http://craigslist.org and http://usa4sale.com are two of the biggest that are available.  There are others that are specialized for farm equipment sales like http://tractorsandfarming.com, and http://usfarmer.com.  Their Web sites provide a wealth of buyers and sellers looking to find anything from a weed trimmer to a vintage tractor and all the parts to fix it.  (Also consider contacting a reseller like http://www.ssbtractor.com)

Reach your local audience too.  Run an add in the local paper, make simple fliers and stick them at the feed and seed, local coffee shop, gas station - wherever the local crowd tends to mill about.  Even try attaching them to the bulletin board in the office of you local grain elevator or FSA office. 

(If you use fliers, make them eye catching – use a bright colored printer paper, or use basic white paper and let the kids decorate.  Whatever it takes to make your piece of paper stuck to the wall more noticeable than the others.)

3.       Maybe you don’t have any desire to mess with trying to sell it yourself- you just want it out of the way.  Here are a couple of options.

Like the George Straight song says, “just give it away.”  Maybe there is someone else that can benefit from your hand-me-downs.  It could even be donated to a local organization like the 4-H chapter or F.F.A.   Donating to non-profit organizations could also gives you a tax write off.  You can find your local 4-h chapter by visiting this Web site http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/index.html.  Contact the area high school to find out more information about donating to FFA (www.ffa.org). 

Another option is to make it a business deal.  Perhaps you have a son or grandson or even a friend of the family’s boy that would be interested in working on a piece of equipment in order to sell.  Set a deadline, maybe give them a small budget and let them have at it.   When it sells, you split the money on it.  Not only does it do you a favor, but it also gives the youngster an opportunity to do some problem solving , learn something about mechanics, and practice in business dealings as well. 

4.      Feeling scrappy?  Depending on the condition, it may be easier to scrap out the metal and take it to the recycling center. Price of steel per pound seems to vary by region.  It generally ranges from 60 cents per pound to a dollar.  A lot of people have made this another form of income to compensate for the rising cost of living.  Check out www.scrap.com  for up to date prices on steel.  They also provide browsers with local buyers of scrap throughout the country.  Not only are you recouping some money out of an investment, you are also helping the environment by recycling!

These are just a few ideas.  In order to make your selling effort a success, advertise well and be persistent.  The right buyer is out there hunting just as hard as you are.  Good luck!

Those alarmed by global warming call it “the other water problem” – not rising sea level, but diminishing snowfall over the western United States. Climate models indicate that snowfall levels could drop as much as 70% by the end of the 21^st century – a prediction that, if true, would require a seismic shift in the way the United States uses water for agriculture and human consumption.

Before you start drilling a 600’ well and building a million-gallon cistern, it should be noted that the climate models we’re talking about have, to put it politely, a sub-optimal record in their predictive accuracy. But even if the models are completely wrong and snowfall levels remain where they are, the west, and agriculture in general, still faces a long-term water problem. Doom mongers have, in recent decades, focused on oil, with “peak oil” being just the latest in a long series of imminent disasters that never seem to pan out. The reason for the failures of all those predictions is simple: oil is not a unique commodity. It can be conserved, it can be used in different ways, and it has any number of substitutes. If all the oil in the world disappeared tonight, there would be a huge economic dislocation – but it wouldn’t be a dislocation caused by there being no more fuel energy for humans to tap, it would be a dislocation caused by us having to undergo a massive shift to alternative sources like ethanol, coal, nuclear, and other renewable energy sources overnight.

Water is different. The quantity of water on our planet – 326 million trillion gallons – is stupendously large, but it is a fixed quantity. That’s all there is – and like land, they aren’t making any more of it. Only about 2% of the total global supply is fresh water – suitable for drinking or for use in the plant growth cycle. What’s more to the point (after all, oil is also a fixed quantity), there is no substitute for water. We can conserve, but humans have to drink water to survive, and the same goes for our livestock. You cannot irrigate a cornfield with anything other than fresh water. Renewable energy systems like solar or wind essentially convert wasted outside input to the planet’s energy system, in the form of sunlight and the heat which drives our wind cycle, and turn it into a replacement for oil – but there is no equivalent for water. What there is, is what we have – and there’s nothing else we can use instead.

Hardly anyone has worried about this in the past, because the quantity of water on the planet has been so enormous in proportion to the human population that water shortages were always a local problem caused by geography, weather, or politics. Six billion human beings later, that’s no longer the case. Water use is going to become one of the central issues that the agriculture industry has to deal with in the future. I’ll be writing further about this in the days to come, talking about how the systems we have for allocating water now are likely to change, and what that is going to mean for farmers and ranchers.

I’ve been reading a lot of good agriculture and farm blogs and I wanted to share with you some of the interesting sites I’ve found lately.

The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is pretty self-descriptive! It’s rather science-oriented and has a lot of deep material about the varieties of plants and animal species that we use in agriculture. (very global perspective) He posts a lot, too, so it’s always a source of new information.

It’s always a good idea to keep track of what the politicians are up; this politician happens to be over in Europe. Mariann Fischer Boel is an agricultural commissioner for the European Union (not a small title) and she maintains a pretty good blog about her work on the commission. Useful to know what they’re thinking over there, since our political elites usually end up echoing European ideas.

On a lighter note, the AgriMissouri Showcase blog highlights the agriculture business in Missouri among other topics; this one is more oriented to the farm lifestyle than to technical material but still an interesting and amusing read…and the recipes make me hungry.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Agriculture Resources site is a constantly-updated source of hard technical data for farmers and agronomists in general; if you have research to do, this is the place to start.

Small farmers often seem to get lost in the crossfire; not at Small Farm Central, though, a resource site and blog aimed at the smallholder. Great information, marketing suggestions, and all kinds of tips.

Looking at the big picture of international farming and how farming ties into economic development? The International Agriculture and Development blog is a great read, with some seriously heavy hitters on the writing staff.

Mulch presents agricultural information from an environmentalist perspective. I don’t always agree with what they have to say but they usually make the “Green” case as convincingly as it can be made.

Finally, the Tiny Farm Blog is a sweet look at organic farming on just two acres (!) - a lot of first-hand information on doing labor-intensive organic farming that’s worth a look if you’re thinking of going in that direction.

Wanna see some more blogs I’ve visited and read in the last few months?  I can’t write a full description for each, but here is a list:

http://abovecapricorn.blogspot.com/

http://agdes.blogspot.com/

http://agriconenergy.blogspot.com/

http://agriearth.com/

http://agripinoy.net/

http://agweb.com/Blogs/Default.aspx

http://agwired.com/

http://biofuelsandclimate.wordpress.com/

http://blog.syracuse.com/farms

http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/fischer-boel/

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/

http://cbf.typepad.com/clagett_farm/

http://cfra.org/blog

http://chewingthecud.org/

http://churchviewfarm.blogspot.com/

http://commonagpolicy.blogspot.com/

http://corncommentary.com/

http://deberryfarm.blogspot.com/

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=business

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=ethanol

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=grainmarkets

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=policy

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=production

http://dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=weather

http://eatwellfarm.typepad.com/

http://ethanol-business.com/

http://fairsted.com/

http://fb.org/blog/

http://fresh-eggs.blogspot.com/

http://georgiafarmwoman.blogspot.com/

http://iowafarmertoday.com/blog/

http://laquihonandsons.blogspot.com/

http://metrofarm.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

http://mlakshmanan.blogspot.com/

http://naturesharmonyfarm.com/

http://negosyopinoy.info/

http://organicschmorganic.blogspot.com/

http://organicschmorganic.blogspot.com/

http://pecorfamily.com/

http://rhapsodyingreen.com/

http://seasonseatingsfarm.wordpress.com/

http://smallfarms.typepad.com/

http://stonyfield.typepad.com/bovine/

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/

http://venaurafarm.blogspot.com/

http://weblogs.nal.usda.gov/infofarm/

For a longer, more complete list of farm blogs from around the world, check out http://www.farmblogs.blogspot.com/